


Distance

by Raufnir



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Altissia, Blind Character, Blind Ignis, Canon Disabled Character, Disabled Character, Gladnis, M/M, and he would die for him and would die if anything happened to him, but they're not without their issues, episode ignis will be the death of me, gladio is a hothead, gladio loves ignis so much he just doesn't know what to do with it, gladnis is life, he's just protective of ignis, i love these two husbands, ignis is the absolute love of his life, ignis manages just fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 21:41:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12093993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raufnir/pseuds/Raufnir
Summary: In the aftermath of Altissia, Gladio has a had time coping with Ignis' blindness. Mistakenly placing his desire to keep Ignis alive into anger, he ends up driving a wedge between him and Ignis after Noctis is consumed by the crystal. In the first year of darkness, it takes a broken arm and some broken ribs at the hands of five iron giants to drive Gladio back to Ignis, to talk it through...





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> I'd read some really good fanfics on here recently, namely the Lights of Lestallum series by Sauronix, and had an anon tumblr ask requesting how Gladio would react after the incident in Altissia, and this happened. Read the Lights of Lestallum series if you have time and love really great writing. I fangirled embarrassingly in the comments section, but it's so good, I couldn't help myself. Anyway, here's my take on how the boys handle things without Noctis, and what Gladio does with all that aggression inside him.

 

“A moment?” Ignis’ voice rose above the sloshing of dirty water, and the whole party halted.

Gladio’s scowl darkened. “Is everything ok?”

Ignis, chin lowered, jaw clenching, let out a soft grunt. His fingers choked the top of his new black cane. “It bloody well isn’t.”

The exchange that followed haunted Gladio for weeks. He knew he’d been behaving like a jerk, telling Ignis where he could and couldn’t go or and what he could and couldn’t do. He _knew_ it and yet still couldn’t stop the words tumbling out of his big fat mouth. Just like on the train with Noct when he’d shoved Prompto full in the face. That big Amicitia temper getting in the way again. It was worse when it was the people he loved.

Ignis had barely spoken to him since then. Noct, of course, had let him come with them. Refused to do otherwise. And Gladio? He hadn’t been able to look Ignis in the face. It just made it worse that Ignis couldn’t see him. He’d gone from Ignis’ lover to something entirely different. And he _hated_ himself for it.

The first year of darkness was awful. But the darkness wasn’t the worst thing about their new world of ruin. It was the distance that forced itself between the three of them without Noct, shoving its shoulders between the gaps and differences that had always been there and, like water freezing between cracks in a cliff face, it pushed them gradually apart.

Ignis, not long blinded and still utterly adrift, went to Lestallum with Iris and Talcott. Gladio moved to Maldacio and permanently rented one of the small herd of campervans that Dave had pulled in as accommodation for hunters. Prompto drifted for a while, beginning in Lestallum with the others, and then, when Cindy called asking about some parts, he stepped in to help. He didn’t come back to Lestallum.

For six months, Gladio took his rage out on every single daemon he could lay his sword to. Nothing was too big or too dangerous for him. Although even he had to admit, with his left arm in a cast and four broken ribs, that taking on five iron giants alone had probably been inadvisable. Another month later and Dave all but ordered him to go to Lestallum, and flat-out refused to give him any more hunts. “You’re not fucking fighting with injuries like that, Gladio,” he’d growled. “You need to heal. I’ve lost too many good souls already. And you’re no good to your king dead.”

Prompto picked him up a week later and drove him to Lestallum. The ride was awkward, but they formed a semblance of conversation. Cindy was doing ok, Cid less so, and a small base of operations was forming at Hammerhead.

The drive up the long tunnel into Lestallum brought back a gallery of memories for Gladio. The Assassins’ Festival, with Noct’s delighted laughter – such a rare and bright thing – and Holly’s cheerful sass, Iris’ excitement at meeting Noct again, though that had been tainted by the siblings’ grief for their father. He recalled how Iris had knocked on his and Ignis’ door that first night, tears dribbling down her face, and how he had held her, rocked her close to his body like he had done when she was a small child. She had seemed so small then. His heart flipped over and suddenly he realised what a shit job he’d been doing of being her big brother. He couldn’t wait to see her, to take her in his arms and hold her again.

Her hair was longer, and she’d put on some muscle and, to his relief, had stopped wearing that tiny skirt of hers. Instead she’d replaced it with long, tightly fitting leather pants, with buckles and belts on the hip. Her beloved boots though still seemed to be going strong. “Your hair’s longer,” he grinned as she pelted at him like a cannonball. “Oof,” he grunted as she connected with his ribs, sending a jolt right through him. Ignoring it, he clung to her.

“Oh Gladdy,” she sobbed, suddenly pulling back as she felt the cast on his forearm on the bare skin of her shoulder. She wore a black tank surprisingly like the ones he used to wear. Her hair brushed her shoulders now. “I’m sorry,” she gasped. “Did I hurt you?”

He shook his head. “Come on, you wanna show me your digs or what?”

She grinned and took his hand, her little fingers clutching his hand as she tugged him through the streets towards her apartment.

The whole lot of them all shared a meal that night under the artificial lights of a restaurant not far from the dank apartment shared by her, Ignis, and Talcott. The noise and clatter, and friendly banter, reminded him of nights at Cape Caem, but the one person missing left a gaping hole in their party.

Conversation moved around the party, and at first, Gladio was pleased to hear that Ignis was going running again, accompanied by Iris, who’d always been a distance runner. He was shocked, however, to learn that Ignis had taken up fighting again, hiring as a personal trainer a hunter who had started up a facility to train those who wanted to learn. Too many people had apparently gone out with the intent of earning themselves a trophy, and had never come back.

Gladio was terrified that Ignis would be one of those if he ever went out on a hunt. The mere thought of Ignis trying to fight blind, after the near catastrophe at Fodina Caestino, filled him with a sick dread. He barely tasted the food, though the pain in his ribcage might have taken away what remained of his appetite after hearing about Ignis.

“Gladio? A word, if I may?” Ignis said, his voice steady and even, face utterly blank.

“Sure.” Standing on the road outside afterwards, they let Iris, Prompto, and Talcott pull ahead. “What’s up?”

“You barely spoke more than two words for that whole dinner,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Ig,” he said, but he couldn’t hide the way his voice had cracked.

Ignis raised an eyebrow. “Gladio…”

Iris yelled at them from along the street. “Oi! Gladdy, we’re going out to see if we can find some ice cream!”

He waved his hand to show he’d heard.

“See you back at the apartment later!” Talcott called to the two remaining behind.

Ignis waited for him to speak again, but Gladio was just staring at the scars on his face, overcome once more with grief and anger.

“Gladio?”

“Yeah,” he croaked, teeth grinding.

“Would you like to come up to the apartment?”

“Sure.”

Ignis drew a deep breath, and turned hesitantly.

“You wanna take my lead?” Gladio asked, taking a decisive step in the direction of the apartment. “Take my arm?”

“Thank you,” Ignis murmured. He slid his hands, bare and un-gloved and freezing cold despite the stifling heat of Lestallum, into the crook of Gladio’s arm, just above the cast, and then slid his fingers up to grasp his bicep gently. “It’s easier this way,” he said. “Let me know if I hurt you.” That was the closest he’d come to commenting on Gladio’s extensive injuries.

“Sure.”

Gladio couldn’t even think as he led his friend and former lover – were they former friends now too? – through the streets in silence. His brain was filled with spinning white noise. The things he’d bellowed at Ignis in those late-night shouting matches drifted back through the fog in his mind.

Ignis struggled a little with the keys to the apartment, but Gladio let him be. It wasn’t his place to barge in and take over. He knew how well that had gone before. The shield just stepped in after Ignis, closed the door quietly behind him, and levered off his big boots.

“Would you like a drink?” Ignis asked, crossing the room and moving with familiar ease now, opening a cupboard. Two glasses chinked.

“You know me,” Gladio smiled. It wasn’t a very happy smile.

Ignis paused and turned his head a little more. He now wore darker, more serious-looking shades than the sunglasses he’d initially used to cover up the damage to his face after Altissia, and it drove  home to Gladio that Ignis really was blind. _Permanently_. “I like to _think_ I know you, Gladio,” Ignis said, somewhat enigmatically.

He set the tumblers down and crossed to a battered old cabinet that might once have been an ice box, in the days before the Lestallum power plant had been built. How they’d come by such an ancient relic, Gladio wasn’t sure, but they were now apparently using it as a drinks cabinet.

“I’ve not had time to become fully proficient with Braille yet,” Ignis said, his voice still tinged with that dead shadow that made Gladio’s skin crawl on the inside. “And I haven’t labelled all of these. Perhaps you’d like to choose us something and pour it?”

The air in the apartment had a musty smell to it, as though the plaster had got damp twenty years ago and never fully dried out, but as Gladio walked past Ignis, he caught the familiar warmth of his aftershave and his breath caught in his throat. If Ignis noticed the stumble in his stride, he didn’t react.

Each nursing a Tenebraean cognac, a rare liquor these days, the two sat on the sofa in silence again. It coiled itself around them, and while it seemed to give Ignis a safe cocoon where he was perfectly protected, it choked Gladio until he thought he was going to die. “Ig,” he finally rasped. “Ig, I…”

“I’ve missed you, Gladio,” Ignis began at he same time. “Gods, I’ve been so worried about you.”

“I should have called,” he muttered into the glass, the cylinder distorting the sound of his voice. He’d started to miss Ignis long before he’d walked out on the man though.

“It’s not that,” Ignis shrugged. “I… I understand why you don’t want to talk, Gladio, I really do. I don’t want to think about it but all I can do is replay it over and over. What we could have done differently…” he adjusted the shield over his eyes. “Noct being swallowed up by the crystal was _not_ part of any plan I had ever conceived.”

Gladio swallowed, letting the silky texture of the cognac, and its notes of violets and candied fruit, soothe his throat for a moment. “I can hear him taunting us.”

“I can still hear that final swing of your sword,” Ignis murmured.

“I hit him right in the face,” Gladio snarled. “Blow like that should have cut his head off.” But it hadn’t. “I keep hearing Prom’s scream, seeing him shoot Ardyn in the back, seeing him go down, and then… just… picking himself up again…” His chest began to heave. “His laugh as he brushed past you with that face all black and oozing…”

Ignis shuddered.

“Ig, I was _trained_ to recognise threats and eliminate them. I _knew_ the guy was a piece of work, but… that was… that was something else… I don’t know that we _can_ eliminate him.”

Ignis was quiet too, his long, elegant fingers cupping the glass like it held all his memories of Noctis in it, and he was afraid it would shatter.

The longer Gladio stared at his hands, the more he ached to have those fingers on his skin. He sighed, and tried to ignore the itch below the cast that was steadily drilling into his sanity.

“I have faith that Noctis will come back to us. With him at our side, we will destroy… _Ardyn_.” Ignis still had trouble saying his name, even then.

Gladio sighed. Ignis was sitting on his right, and as such, Gladio had a clear view of the scars creeping out of the top and bottom of the visor like spreading roots. Before he knew what he was doing, he had reached his right hand out for Ignis’ shoulder and squeezed.

Ignis’ lips parted and he let out the tiniest hint of a gasp. “Gladio,” he breathed. “Gods, I’ve missed you.” He turned his face a little more, and as he rotated into view, Gladio saw the furrow in the centre of his brows. “Dave told me about your ‘activities’ of late…”

Guilt gnawed at a knot in his stomach. “Yeah?”

“Yes. He told me you’ve been getting more and more reckless.” He clicked his tongue. “ _Five_ iron giants, Gladio? You were always hot-headed, but never _reckless_ …” He swallowed another mouthful of cognac, the glass almost empty now. “Why?”

Gladio scowled into his own drink. “Always got so much anger, Ig. I don’t know what to do with it anymore.”

“You used to give it to me,” he said wryly. “Used to turn it into passion.”

Gladio blinked and looked up at him.

Ignis’ next words cut right through Gladio. “That all changed when Ardyn carved my face up so prettily.”

That wasn’t why they stopped fucking. “Ig, you know it has nothing to do with that, right?”

That eyebrow lanced up again.

“Ig, you’re as beautiful as you always have been to me. I… I just… Every time I look at you I get so _angry_. I wasn’t there to protect you in Altissia. I couldn’t keep them from…” He stopped. He still didn’t know exactly what was done to him, only that the end result left Ignis lying in a pile of blood-spattered rubble in Altissia, unconscious, with his face and torso ravaged by burns, the like of which no doctor had ever seen, nor potion could fix. Gladio let out a shivering breath as Ignis finished his drink and set it down on a coffee table. Rings of moisture had etched circles into the varnish so that it looked more like a pond in the rain than a table top.

Without a word, Ignis curled up and laid his head on Gladio’s thigh. Instinctively, Gladio lowered his hand to Ignis’ hair. Where before it had been a pale, ashen brown, it was entirely grey now. “You wanna take these off?” he asked, tapping the arm of the shades lightly.

“You don’t mind?”

“Nah. I’d rather you were comfortable. Give ‘em to me and I’ll put them on the table for you.”

With he shield gone from his eyes, Ignis’ whole face looked softer. Gladio stroked his cheek with the back of his fingers and Ignis let out a long breath. “How long are you going to stay here for?” he asked after a few minutes of easy silence. It was like they were migrating birds come home after a year alone at sea.

“Not sure,” Gladio said. “I brought all my shit with me from Maldacio, so I got no reason to go back.”

“But do you have a reason to stay?”

Gladio looked down at him, raking his fingers gently through that soft hair. His chest ached, and it wasn’t the broken ribs this time. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I got plenty of reasons to stay.”

Ignis smiled the first true smile that Gladio had seen. It chased some of the shadows away, and he felt Ignis’ spine go slack with relief. “I’m glad,” he breathed. He sounded tired. So tired. Within moments, he was fluttering on the edge of consciousness. With a few more strokes of Gladio’s hand in his hair, and just as he was going under, he slurred, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he rumbled. “Never stopped.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @expectogladiolus, or @raufnirsramblings, and if you liked it, let me know by hitting kudos or leaving me a comment. Thanks for reading, and have a lovely day, wherever you are.


End file.
